I Hope My Daughters Are Always This Proud of Their Judaism

A non-Jewish friend once told me that driving my daughter Sacha to drama class every week had become the highlight of his Monday. On those car rides, she would chatter away about Jewish holidays, traditions and stories, completely unprompted.

“I can tell she’s really proud of her family,” he said.

It meant more to me than he knew. It’s one thing to see your child celebrating their Jewish identity at home, but it’s another entirely to hear who they are when you’re not there.

That was the moment I realized how much things had shifted across generations. Because when I was a child, my Jewish identity lived mostly at home.

I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in London, in a home with a strong Israeli foundation and energy. My mum was Sephardi Israeli, and my dad was Ashkenazi and English. It was a happy, vibrant childhood, filled with Shabbat dinners, synagogue and summers in Israel every year. Israel was the highlight of my childhood; festivals with my extended family there felt natural and effortless.

My parents never told me to hide who I was. They also never told me explicitly to be proudly Jewish. They simply were themselves in the world. My mum was bold, outgoing, vibrant and daring. My dad was gentle and steady. 

Out in the world, it was a different story. I went to a non-Jewish school in a largely non-Jewish part of London. I definitely had a feeling that I didn’t quite fit in Jewishly. The Jewish crowds I encountered felt very cool and overconfident, and that wasn’t me. 

I remember feeling irritated when some Jewish girls talked about Shabbat or challah in front of non-Jewish friends. I thought it excluded the non-Jewish girls and seemed cliquey. Looking back, that probably says more about my insecurity than anything else. I never consciously feared antisemitism, but I didn’t feel completely comfortable being openly Jewish in non-Jewish spaces either. 

At university, I mostly had non-Jewish friends, and I don’t even remember explicitly telling people I was Jewish. It wasn’t hidden, but it wasn’t expressed either. 

In fact, I only really began living my Jewish life more loudly and proudly after becoming a parent.

I never thought about how I wanted to raise my children Jewishly prior to having my girls. But as Sacha and Zara started getting older, I realized that there were parts of my childhood that hadn’t sat comfortably with me, and as a mother I’m intentional about not repeating the things that didn’t work: everything from hating Sunday school and being “forced to do Jewish stuff,” to the awkwardness of compartmentalising my identity and feeling slightly out of place in both the Jewish and non-Jewish worlds.

So to counter all of that, I’m quite intentional about making Judaism fun, meaningful and relevant. We talk openly about why we love being Jewish and what it means to us.

For holidays, the girls help me set fun tablescapes. One year my younger daughter Zara invented a tradition where everyone had to decorate their own special cupcake for Rosh Hashanah. 

I love the idea that Judaism can evolve over time, and while we absolutely keep some of the traditions that I remember from my parents and my husband’s parents, I’m passionate about introducing new ones that resonate with my kids — and giving them the freedom to create their own. I’m very against shoehorning Judaism into the one “right” way.

Today, at 11 and 12, my girls love being Jewish. They see it as a superpower and a big part of their identity. Judaism is central to who they are in a way it just wasn’t for me growing up. 

Part of it is probably because they see how my work revolves around celebrating Jewish life publicly. I’m so out and proud that they follow suit. But the thing about my work is that I started my first business, Smashing The Glass, because I felt unseen as a Jewish woman in the wedding industry. That led to other projects, like Your Jewish Life and Luxe Jewish Life, which now sells “Jewish Joy Journals” for kids and adults,  which also emerged from spaces where I felt unseen and wanted to fix that. 

All that said, I feel like it’s important for my daughters to know that Jewish pride doesn’t have to be loud. Sometimes it’s that small voice inside you that says, “I can handle this.” “I belong here.” “I don’t need to shrink.” It’s just being confident in who you are in a non-Jewish space, and that’s what I’ve tried to instill in them. 

I’m also parenting in a different world than the one I grew up in, where everything is much more out there and less subtle, and whereOctober 7 has changed so much for Jewish families. 

I had to explain antisemitism to my daughters at ages 9 and 8 after antisemitic graffiti appeared at their school. It felt shocking and wrong that they should have to understand those concepts so young.

On the flipside, I began living my Jewish life even more loudly, and of course that’s affected my girls, too. I only started wearing a Star of David regularly after October 7. It’s so important for me to show them that they don’t need to hide parts of themselves. Of course I never want them to put themselves in danger. But ultimately, what I fear more than antisemitism is internalized shame.

I never want my daughters calculating how Jewish is “too Jewish.” I want them to grow up knowing they already belong, just as they are. Not because the world is always kind, but because their sense of self is solid enough not to be dictated by other people’s comfort levels. I don’t want their Jewishness to be something that lives at home and gets tucked away outside it.

We can’t control the world our children grow up in. But we can shape the voice that lives inside their heads. And my greatest hope for my girls, as they grow up and start making their own way in the world, is for that voice to say, “This is who I am. And I don’t ever need to hide or shrink.”